Possibility of Increasing the Growth and Photosynthetic Properties of Precocious Walnut by Grafting

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The results of the work are promising for their practical use in cropping of Juglans spp., especially in the case of continuation of experiment in subsequent years, as it will be possible to assess the productivity of plants.

I have some suggestions for Authors to improving manuscript.

1. I suggest redrafting the topic of manuscript on:

‘Possibility of increase the growing and photosynthetic properties of early bearing walnut by grafting process’

2. Introduction should be improved and supplemented with the following informations:

33 line

What is the cultivation area around the world of Juglans spp., which country is the largest producer of nuts or poses of woods, what is the plants productivity?

41 line
Who provide breeding of Juglans spp. and what is the progress?
Which varieties and why are they most important in practise/cropping?
What breeding and selection methods are used to improve Juglans spp., include inter and intra crossing, mutagenesis?
Which rootstocks cultivars/ varieties play a key role and why?

37 line

’ ….planted’ – ‘..planted and cultivated/cropping’

37-38

‘However, because it is slow to mature (6–7 years to produce fruit), it requires large investment in the early stages of growth, when output is small’ – This sentence is not clear

76-79

Why were these and no other varieties selected for testing (early bearing walnut ‘Liaoning 1’ nut production and hybrid walnut ‘Zhongningsheng’ - wood production)?

What is the ploidy level of analyzed varieties in the context of the sentence contained in verses 71-73, 294-298?

74-75 lines

How do the following sentences apply to the thesis of the study?

‘Moreover, the walnut genome has been sequenced (Martínez-García et al., 2016; Zhu et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 75 2020). ‘We can use genetic techniques to further study rootstock–scion interactions.’

84 line

I suggest change ‘The study site was an experimental field in Baoding in the Chinese….’

on ‘The study point was located on an experimental ……’

98 and 102 lines

I suggest change ,..plant productivity, on ,..growth characteristics… 98

‘..Plant productivity is expressed on..’ Plant growth is expressed… ‘102, as it has place in the rest of the work – 138 lines – Results, 3.1

3. The authors at work did not study the productivity of plants at this stage of the experiment/growth of the plants, so they should use this term very carefully in the entire work, also in 'Discussion in the context of the obtained results '

4. 13-81 – A strong methodical linguistic correction is necessary, in particular for some parts of the work as- Abstract, Introduction.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks for your kind handling of the manuscript entitled “Possibility of Increasing the Growth and Photosynthetic Properties of Precocious Walnut by Grafting”. We have thoroughly revised the manuscript based on your valuable comments and suggestions. A point-to-point response was also provided to facilitate you in locating the changes. Please see the attachment.

Thank you very much for your assistance

Sincerely yours,

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper have some grammar and language issues, which need to be addressed. The Authors may want to get some editing help from someone with full professional proficiency in English. Even the formatting is not that indicated by the journal.
Below there are some of the inaccuracies that I found.
Keywords: two of these (“walnut” and “plant productivity”) are already present in the title.
Line 33: scientific names must be written in italics (this also applies later);
Line 36: bibliographic citations should be referred, according to editorial rules, as numbers (this also applies later);
Lines 56-58: this period is hard to read; rewrite
Line 112: “-2” and “-1” must be reported as exponents (this also applies later)
Table 1: the formatting is not correct (the number of columns is too large for space); you need to divide the table or change its orientation.
Figures 1-5: the figure captions are not complete; each figure caption, in fact, should be fully understandable even if the text of the manuscript is not checked.
Discussion: the beginning of the discussion is practically similar to the introduction; from line 251-253 you talk about the influence of environmental factors on photosynthesis, but in the manuscript no clear information given about them; the information about region climate is not enough.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks for your kind handling of the manuscript entitled “Possibility of Increasing the Growth and Photosynthetic Properties of Precocious Walnut by Grafting”. We have thoroughly revised the manuscript based on your valuable comments and suggestions. A point-to-point response was also provided to facilitate you in locating the changes. Please see the attachment.

Thank you very much for your assistance

Sincerely yours,

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The indications given have been well received, so the manuscript can be accepted in present form. Two small notes: in keywords it is better to write Juglans spp. and in line 331 "characteristics" is written with an extra "r".